Is there way to convert FM to Docbook XML?

[Ian Proudfoot · Accepted solution]

Hello David,

Yes you can convert FrameMaker unstructured documents to DocBook XML. FrameMaker provides the tools that you need. However this process is not an off-the-shelf solution because there's no really such thing as a standard FrameMaker document. The design of your source document will hopefully use Paragraph and Character formats. These formats are referenced in a special conversion table document that converts the unstructured source document into the target structured document. The development of the conversion table is something that you will have to do yourself, unless you get a FrameMaker developer to do it. The quality of the conversion depends on the way that the source document was tagged. After a successful conversion you then assign the XDocBook XML application and save as XML. Of course there are various other refinements to do before you get to the final structured docBook XML, but it can be done. I did it for a huge XML conversion project about nine years ago and it's still in use today.

All of this is described in the Structure Application Developer guide and reference manuals which are available online:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/framemaker/pdfs/Structure_Dev_Guide.pdf

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/framemaker/pdfs/Structure_Dev_Reference.pdf

I hope this helps.

Ian

[Wiedenmaier]

Hi David,

I did a Webinar with Adobe in December, where I showed how to move from unstructured documents to DITA. There is no difference in process and what you need to do for DocBook or any other XML standard. (only the structure Definition of Course) 🙂

Here is the link to the recording. Hope this helps.

markus

Make the move! Migrating Unstructured Content to DITA with FrameMaker 2015